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Wednesday, October 29, 2008

May I present.....

.................my very fist tag.
Ok…Coming to the tag I promised to work on.For the uninitiated like the DH and mama and my aunts who are probably the only readers of this blog other than my friend across the seas who tagged me,a tag is “something” (um-uh) in which u are asked to write on some topic or the other.And I firmly believe that this is just a polite way of telling ppl whose blogs u read and who have not posted anything for more than 3 weeks ,”Get up and post, u lazy moron”.
So coming back to the tag, here is the deal

The tag:
Two questions in each category. Answer them and then tag your friends from the blog-o-sphere. Yeah ,except that I really don’t have that many friends on that particular sphere…In fact I have only one and that one tagged me.

Yesterday

Your oldest memory

My oldest memory?I guess that means my earliest memory.(Cos technically my oldest memory wud be what I did a minute ago which wud be….scratch my back?I don’t think anyone really wud be interested in that)..hmmm…lemme think…My earliest memory wud be playing house-house in my grandmother’s bedroom by the light of a table lamp cos that was the only light switch I cud reach to turn on.Its a memory redolent with my grandmother’s perfume,cuticura powder,clean sheets,moth balls and sandalwood…It’s a smell I associate with my grandparents to this day and that is the reason why I love the Cuticura deoderant as much as I do…The large cluttered table with rusted photoframes of saints and my great grand-parents were carefully pushed aside to set up my kitchen.The one-inch space in front of the musty dusty files on the shelves below,held my imaginery groceries and a few tiny pots to make it more real.On the bed ,alternately sitting and lying down based upon whether he was asleep or going to school ,was my baby, my patient old grandfather ,white springy hair with glasses,dressed in a white baniyan and a white dhoti with bottle green border.A quiet man ,who in spite of his difficulty in moving around,wud obediently sit up when I ordered that it was time for school and go back to lying down when I decided that he had spent enuf time eating the imaginery dinner. I dunno why we never played in the mornings…It was always in the evenings before dinner and I don’t have a memory of playing with him in the mornings.
On second thoughts am not so sure if that really is my earliest memory.It cud very well be the time when my mom had me sit on the Western toilet with my legs dangling far above the floor to do my …um…daily duty…while I clutched at her tightly,terrified of falling inside the commode and wished desperately for the comfort of my green potty.
Chuckle…

Though as my grandmother used to say, my earliest memory shud really have been the time I was standing at the window of my grandparent’s bedroom and waving at my grandfather who was out for his daily stroll in the overgrown garden at the back of the house. Supposedly, I was standing at the window and repeatedly waving when my grandmother asked me who am waving to. I replied that am waving at granddad and I believe the lady thought nothing of it until I called out to my granddad “Why are u sitting there? Come here”.My grandmother asked me where my granddad was sitting and I replied “In that pit” and that’s when my grandmother luckily decided to investigate and found that my poor granddad had lost his balance and fallen into a pit.Since I was the only soul in the vicinity he was waving at me for help while I cheerfully waved back at him.In my defense, I have absolutely no memory of the incident and really cannot tell u why it seemed perfectly normal that my granddad wud sit in a mud pit in his white dhoti and wave at me.All I can think of is that all adults did strange things and when questioned,always claimed that a child wud not understand.

What were you doing 10 years ago?

Cripes!!let me count back and figure out which class I was in.I guess it wud be 1998 and that was the year I wrote my tenth standard exams.Well,ten years ago wud be 1998 November.Correction.I wud have finished my tenth std exams and wud have been half way thru the 11th std curriculum.I cud have been anywhere from the labs to the PT ground or maybe the yoga hall..Havent got a clue.

Today


Your first thought today morning

Did DH finally run away? Chuckle…just kidding…To be honest, the first thought was that I did not have any horrible dreams, thank God!!!.I have all kindsa weird horrible dreams that seem extremely real and worry the life out of me…And I make sure I tell them to someone cos apparently there is some old belief that a dream at dawn will come true.and that if u tell it to someone it wont come true…Even after telling it ,I still worry abt it coming true .and so weird or not,any horrible dream is immediately described to the DH to make sure that it does not come true..and for good measure ,I tell it to my Mama too,though she really has much less patience than the DH for my verbose accounts of my weird dream.I guess she doesn’t realise that the verbose accounts rise from a sheer terror that missing an important detail may cause the dream to come true.
To the ppl out there gaping in shock that I cud be capable of such superstitions,well,to each his own belief…and lets say I have my own reasons.
Its almost 2 years…since I lost a very dear friend.I cant say the wound has healed..and I will never forget how I woke up at 4 a.m. in the morning,heart pounding,trying to remember who I saw in the dream,still shaking with the violence of the accident as I saw it.The more I tried to remember the face,the faster the dream receded,leaving behind only a taste of terror, a helplessness…A week later my friend passed away….My friend did not die in an accident. He died of a heart attack at a ripe old age of 23 years,with just one exam to clear to achieve his dream of becoming a post grad, poised to be a team lead in a week’s time ,nominated for a promotion due the next month.I have never been able to shake off chilling thought that it was his face that I saw in the dream.

If you built a time capsule today what would it contain?

Well,that’s an easy one.Of course ,Dad,Mama,DH,Buntu,Tofy , some food supplies,a few good books,a laptop with an internet connection,lotsa craft supplies.
Sheer bliss!!!Lets go!!!

Tomorrow


This year ….
Hmmm….This year has been…chuckle…an experience.Honestly ,that’s the only way it cud be described.I got married and more importantly , made the right choice;Marvelled at the community effort that took place at a state level that in a nutshell can be described as my marriage;realised how blessed I am that so many ppl cared; Put up with a lot of crap and then realised I did not have to;Lost myself and found myself;Got my career into perspective; Found lots of hobbies and am loving it,blogged more regularly than I thought I wud, found an amazing kindred spirit across the seas and fell in love with her,found myself a new aunt and fell in love with her;made lots of new friends and learnt the value of a smile on a tuf day.Missed my dog,my bro,my parents and my country to the point of insanity(yeah,there was a point when I started thinking I shud have become a bajji wali or atleast married a bajjiwala.That wud have kept me in my own country) . And still stayed put in the belief that they wud not expect anything less of me.

And at this point am happy and planning a banana nut cake for the evening.

What do you see yourself doing 14 years from now?

I see myself as mad as ever, as loony as ever if not more and as creative as ever…Maybe a little more patient. Actually, I don’t see that at all…mmm..hmmm..Nope.I don’t see that at all.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

A turn in the maze

Its strange what the human mind can come up with as u trot down the memory lane...I think its not just a lane..Its a maze and depending on the turn which u take u come across a different memory.And its the strangest things that make u take a specific turn.For instance,this morning while I was sitting outside with my customary cup of coffee,enjoying the early morning sun and rolling a few beads on the white sheets of the notepad Anup had left on the table,gazing into space when it suddenly dawned on me that I was staring at Anup's garden,a plastic trough filled with soil and in which abt 2 weeks ago we had a couple of flowers bloom...The plastic trough had some green stuff growing on the insides under the soil…and I vaguely thought of moss..and hpw I had loved moss as a child…In Kerala my grandmother’s house had a compound wall that was the joy of any kid…The right height to look over,I spent hrs taking in the details of the neighbours houses and simply exploring the tiny holes in the rough walls….and the moss that grew on the walls was one of my favorite discoveries…thick,soft and green and in places there were tiny stalks with a blob on the end …it was velvety to the touch ,a beautiful shade of green ..I had a thing for bright colors even then and I loved stroking the moss and using a stick to carefully scrape off a piece without breaking it and planting it on a flat part of the ground,imagining a tiny house behind it…It reminded me of the lawn in my aunt’s house at Mangalore and since I had always been fascinated by the lawn,the moss to me was just a mini lawn…I was always trying to scrape off really large bits and but my love affair with moss ended when once a tiny earthworm crawled out of a bit of moss…That still gives me the creepies….I hate worms of any kind…and the thought of them gives me goose bumps..
That was the age when u really believe that there is a mini world out there and that elves and pixies do live in amongst the daisies…That was the age when I wud read abt Brer Rabbit stuffing his goods in a hollow and set out to find a hollow,hoping to find the goods of a Fox considering we had a lot of foxes in the place… It helped that my grandmother’s house was located on a large plot with enuf Mango trees and gnarly branched trees to delight the soul of any kid…My favorites being one mango tree at the back of the plot and another a drumstick tree(is it really called a drumstick tree?) next to the house…The drumstick tree was my dream come true…sloping up at a very convenient angle ,it gave me direct access to the terrace of the house..I cud clamber up the tree and either sit on the branches or climb up on the sunshade and sit there with a view of the overgrown garden and the neighbour;s house…I have spent so many lovely hrs on that spot,reading a book,watching the breeze shake the leaves of the different trees there…Even though the plot was on the side of a very busy road,it still was a world of its own…Many are the hot afternoons where I have resisted the temptation of a nap to sit up on my nest where it was cool thanks to the shady trees all around…
I knew even then that Brer Rabbit lived outside of India and I really cud not hope to find his goods in any of our trees and quite often in the midst of my expeditions,wished that the foxes in our compound had a little bit of imagination and wud atleast get together and talk so that I cud watch them…In fact my grandmother’s house has a peephole on the front door which has a small shutter and at night the foxes wud roam the courtyard and come as close as the doorsteps and I wud peep at them ,trying not to breathe lest they know am there and run away….They were a bit too small than I imagined them to be but boy, were they beautiful…and it helped to have an elder cousin who was as loony as I was and stayed up with me to peek thru the peephole whenever she came down during her summer vacation…We both were supposed to be in bed sleeping like the angelic cherubs our moms had hoped for but alas,our respective mothers were sadly disillusioned. …In fact,I think they had never had any illusions abt my cousin cos from what I heard she always drove my poor aunt nuts by staying awake all night long and going to sleep all day long…chuckle…Ok..Mama..lets talk abt my sleeping patterns in private…

And then with a suddenness that comes from realizing that u are late for office,I came back to the present and trotted off to office…A colleague wished me a happy Diwali and asked me if we celebrate Diwali in South India..and that led me down another turn in the maze…
A dark night when the entire colony decided to celebrate diwali.The flats opposite to our house had all their lights turned off and their balconies decorated with lighted candles which were a less messier option than the traditional oil lamps.
My mama gave in to our excitement and we all trotted up to our own balcony and lit a row of candles bordering the entire balcony.And the desire for perfection had me and Buntu running around trying to keep the breeze from blowing out any of the candles…and then finally to our dismay there fell rain putting out the candles on our balcony and on the neighbouring balconies…My mom tried to console us saying that it always rained on Diwali…which was not exactly consoling to 2 kids who had just managed to keep the candles all lit…
Chuckle…I guess am right abt the memory lane being a maze.It just depends on which turn u take and u come across something u haven’t thot abt in years…

Sunday, October 26, 2008

ta-daaaaa!!!!

Twiddledum-dee ..Twiddledum-doo...am hopping on one foot and on the other too....looloo..lala...oh..laaaa....aha!!
Ok..In case nobody understood what that was,let me explain that it was a happy dance...with music to match..because...ladies and gentlemen,because....My parcel Arrived!!!!!Yippppppeeee..oooohooooo...!!!
Apparently the parcel had been delivered at the apartment office some days back but there was no notification left in our post box...So the two poor souls who traipsed daily to the post box and traipsed back disappointed really did not have to be disappointed..Anyway..whats done is done and over with...But boy...am I thrilled..Practically made my weekend...I have been gloating over the contents the way Rapunzel gloated over her golden tresses...
Apart from that,nothing else to say...adieu...!!!

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Tattle away!!!

Ok..so it has been a while since I got round to posting anything here and its come to the point that my friend across the seas has gone to the extent of tagging me in the hope of giving me a topic to wrte abt,which I shall use as my next post.Now,to be honest,I have had lots to say but since they were all in bits and pieces and crumbs as well,it was rather tuf to write it down as a post and even more to think up a title for the post...so finally ..here comes tattle away which is nothing but a bunch of mismatched thots which keep going round and round and round in my head and simply refuse to rest...So in the hope of making them R.I.P.,here I write.
My parcel has not come.Now anyone who knows me even vaguely ,knows that am a sucker for surprises and packages of any kind.I love my mail,be it email,snail mail or parcels...well,with the exception of bills...not cos they are bills but cos they are so...well,so....impersonal...or rather they are sent only cos they want money from me...I know it sounds mad but still it is the reason why am disappointed to see bills. I dont like bank statements either...cos they are too long and drive me nuts.So I leave them to mama....She did spend 20 years looking at them...so she wudnt mind looking at them once in a while..In fact I shud think she gets some thrills from them...Yeah,mama,I can hear u snort...
But am wandering...this is the sole reason why I have not written any posts for the last 25 days...On my desktop you will find several half written posts which are half written cos my thoughts keep wandering...and then I find myself writing something that is totally different from what I started with and that for some reason seemed rather odd to me...ha ha..thats a joke..something I did seemed odd to me...when the world looks at everything I do and says "Crazy woman!!!".Ok..its not that bad...but then lets get back to my parcel cos I have been wandering and thats the second time.

Mama sent me a parcel with lotsa surprises in it thru DH's friend ,Deepu...and the sweet guy (Deepu,if u are reading this,wipe that evil grin off ur face.My mama thinks u are a very sweet guy and I wud agree with her if it had not been for the story u told me abt how Vinod ran after u with a knife after u teased him relentlessly.)Anyway,Deepu dutifully mailed the parcel but being new to U.S. he sent it thru ordinary post and my DH did not think to tell him otherwise and for that matter neither did I.(Yeah...am defending them both.)So we can't track it and its not yet reached...though its been a good ten days since he sent it..The only reason I can think of it being this late is that the postman must be walking all the way from Nebraska to deliver it and after all ,u cant walk to California from Nebraska in ten days...Ok,mama..Please dont tell me again(u already told me 7 times ) that u are sure that the postman has by now opened the parcel and finished up all the goodies and is enjoying my stuff...I dunno if it is a good thing that I dont know the contents of the parcel cos I wanted it to be a surprise or if it is a bad thing cos I dunno what the postman is having so much fun with.

Now that said and done,my right thumb has developed a tender spot thanks to me crocheting like a crazed coot all thru the weekend.Now to answer ppl who ask "thats all u did all weekend?crochet?",here is my answer.No...apart from finishing 3 crochet projects,I also baked a banana nut cake,made banana icecream & vaccummed the house..and sometime during last week I tidied the clothes cupboard again.Yeah,wud have to be proud of me.I am a marvel.Thanks.

My knee is still painful and its been exactly 2 weeks since I went to get my x-ray taken.For reasons unknown,the x-ray has not yet reached my Doctor's office.Now I am concerned abt that Thursday being jinxed.I mean ,my parcel was sent on that day;my x-ray was taken on that day...and neither have turned up...Now I must think of what else I have done that day.

I found myself an aunt..Now though I have been unusally blessed with doting aunts,its always nice to find one more...Aunts are a lot like handbags...Uncles also for that matter...u really cant have too many of them...Am not sure that statement makes any sense but what ho, am past caring.This is therapeutic if u know what I mean.I am finally getting rid of that train of thoughts that kept going "Here we go round ur teensy brain,teensy brain,teensy brain..here we go round ur teensy brain ...early in the morning"...Now where was I?Yeah...abt aunts...I spoke to this lovely lady who happens to be my mom's college friend,whose dad I have known for the better part of my life and have always thought of as a great candidate for the role of Santa Claus.
Though I have never met her,I always knew abt her.And finally 2 weeks back she called me up and wow!!So nice was she that I had to adopt her...So thats one more aunt in my kitty...though am not sure if she wud want me for a niece...For that matter am not sure my aunts-by-birth want me for a niece either but then they have no choice cos they are stuck with me...He..he...

I am having major doubts abt my crafts...cos here I am crocheting one thing after the other and Tashi had recently posted that she just finished her first knitting project which was scarf for her mom and then her colleague has given her an order for a scarf.How come I have not sold a thing?But like Anup says my creations have not been given a lot of publicity...For some reason am rather shy abt showing them off to ppl who dont know me...In fact am downright uncomfortable...:-(...Its strange ..I dont mind sending pics of the things I made my friend who has not even seen me ....But showing them to people I see on a daily basis at office..well..thats another thing altogether..I know...am hopeless...and loony as well...:-(

I have lost weight..Yippeee..In spite of an aching leg which keeps me from going to the gym,climbing stairs,bending and what not,I still managed to lose weight...My sleeves are singing with happiness where earlier they were stretched tight enuf to be my second skin with a threat that a refusal to let my arms in one day was not too far off.So what did I do?Remember the fruitwala outside my office?Well,I have been a regular customer for the last 3 weeks..I have been eating one fruit bag daily for lunch but dinner was the usual meal.Voila!!What a change!!I was surprised to find my sleeves much looser than what they were expected to become. I had only hoped to keep off from gaining more weight but losing some was a bonus...God does spoil me :-)

Coming after that last para this is gonna be very funny.I have an urge to cook.Ok. Stop laughing...Am not hungry..but just that the urge to try new dishes has been ripening for the last 2 days.Yday I tried ginger prawn fried rice and dum aloo...and the DH loved them both....Today wud have been another cooking day but for the disaster of a meeting that we had at office till late night.What with the manager frantically trying to say everything in ten minutes when the original presentation had been planned for a good 90 minutes plus the security guard glaring at the Manager and threatening to turn the lights off,I must say the samosas and the chai served were the only part that made sense to me thru the entire do.The manager raced thru one slide instead of the originally planned twenty and then turned to the room full of blank faces and asked "So do u all feel enthusiastic and excited abt this new idea?",there was pin drop silence and practically no one moved.The manager glared at us and looked at his head henchman threateningly and repeated the question and this time we all chorused weakly "Yesssss!!!" and thats when he relaxed and the vein throbbing at his temple decided to keep the explosion for the next meeting.I did feel sorry for the man ...
That said and done,adieu ,ppl...have a nice one...will be back with more.